I just read this off the ThinkChristian website that Rolling Hills Baptist Church in Fayetteville, GA has decided to sell its brand new building and use the money to take care of those in need in the community. Their $1.4 million dollar new facility is nearly paid off, but the congregation overwhelmingly voted to put the church on the market.

…we’ve come to the conclusion that we want to invest more deeply in people rather than property. We’ve grown tired of investing more and more of our budget on mortgage, utilities, insurance, etc… at the expense of ministry and mission.

In an interview, Pastor Frank Mercer said:

People lives area falling apart and we’ve got to make a difference. We want to see roofs over people’s heads. We want to see food in people’s bellies.

The church plans to meet either in spaces donated from other churches or a rented movie theater.

What would you say if your church decided to do the same thing? Or maybe another question is - could your church do the same thing? Are we too attached to our buildings? Or perhaps that isn't a fair question because buildings can provide strategic ministry centers for the Kingdom. So is having a building necessarily a "bad thing?"

The Japanese saying in this short film, “Kick Out The Ladder”, from Honda is “Send them upstairs, take the ladder away, and set fire to it!” Needless to say that word picture definitely provokes motivation to achieve the impossible and unthinkable.

How do you motivate others on your team or in your church? Are the challenges inherent to the task alone enough to motivate, or do you ever feel the need to "kick out the ladder"?

Jeff Brooks has another great article in Fundraising Success Magazine.

In the article he outlines three important laws of fundraising that ministries and nonprofits must follow if they want to be a success.

Having helped to craft fundraising letters for everything from general ministry asks, church capital campaigns and mission trips - I can tell you from experience these tips are not to be ignored.

The first lawThere’s a clear inverse correlation between the complexity of a message and its effectiveness at motivating people. In layman’s terms, the more you say, the less people listen.

The second lawSelf-focused communication is an ineffective way to attract people and might make you come across as boring, clueless, creepy — or all three.

The third lawThis final law helps us understand how to avoid running afoul of the other two: The more people involved in creating, revising and polishing a fundraising message, the more complex and self-focused it will be. Or as grandma might have said, too many cooks spoil the broth.

There is no escaping it, pastors and ministry leaders are busy people. And although much of that busyness may be justified - a leader must guard themselves but becoming burned out.

This is a great post from Mark Batterson. He discusses 10 ways for pastors and ministry leaders to create margin in their life. Here is his list:

1) Use all of your vacation days. You owe it to yourself and your family.
2) Protect your day off religiously.
3) Don't schedule meetings on certain days or before certain hours.
4) Delegate more responsibility.
5) Only check email during designated times during the day.
6) Get up earlier in the morning.
7) Schedule meetings with God and yourself.
8) Turn off the TV.
9) Get out of your organizational context and go to a conference.
10) Hit the gym. You don't have enough time or energy NOT to work out.

To many churches and ministries want to seem smart and on top of things when we communicate, so we load our stories with facts and data. But too much kills the heart of a story - it's emotion.

Mark Rovner of SeaChange discussing storytelling during his talk at the Network for Good said that "too many facts and too much data in your stories are the equivalent of emotional Novocain."

So what belongs in a story? According to Mark, Character, desire and conflict.

The character is the protagonist. Who is the main character? It needs to be a person, not your organization. A good protagonist is human, attractive, funny, good-hearted and up against a serious challenge.

Desire is what the character wants and pursues.

Conflict is the active opposition to the protagonist achieving his/her goals. Conflict is very important: You need high stakes, long odds and maybe even a villain.

For many, asking a person to financially contribute to the church/missions trip/capital campaign/cause/ministry is the most stressful part of the fund development process. Sending mail is easy. Going to lunch is easy. Telling a donor and ministry partner how we used their last gift is easy. But asking for the next gift (or even the first gift) - that is often times not so easy.

Once the ask is made, we sometimes have a tendency to immediately start back peddling or we just keep on talking. DON'T. Just sit and be quiet. Certainly those few seconds of silence may seem like an eternity, but that short silence is the most critical point in the conversation.

Make sure you check out this video! (The video will be online for a short period of time from this posting..beyond that time, archived videos can only be accessed through a paid membership)

I hate to receive those emails that go longer than a novel and that look like one long ongoing sentence. Most often emails should be kept short and sweet.

And yet sometimes your church or ministry can't keep an email short due to some important information that needs to be immediately communicated. So how do you write a long email that will be read by your church?

Make sure the subject line grabs the reader - Make sure you think about the subject line first, it's the most important item in your email. In just 30-50 characters of the subject line you need to get across why they need to open and read your email.

Use Subheads - Getting the attention of your readers using subheads is always a great idea. It breaks up your thoughts and gets to the heart of what you're trying to communicate while letting them do the necessary skimming.

Make sure you Communicate in Small Chunks - It is important to get to your point fast in small succinct paragraphs. Plus writing in small chunks creates more white space and therefore makes your email more readable.

Use Bullets - Bullets break up points or benefits so that your readers can get your information quickly by scanning. This is a very popular copywriting tactic for email and the web in general.

Write Like You Speak - When you are talking to a person at church, you don't speak in long boring sentences. You are probably concise and conversational. The same should be true of your email.

"Curious about Twitter? Toying with the idea of incorporating Facebook
in your marketing plan? We were. Bill's presentation on social media
was informative, and more importantly, created aha moments which
spurred action. In other words, Bill helped us 'get it.'"

Want to make sure your webpage does the best possible job in motivating it's visitors to take your desired actions such as submitting a donation or signing up for membership? Not sure how different web page headlines, graphics and copy compare to each other? Now you don't have to guess. Google has recently released a new product: a FREE testing tool called Website Optimizer.

Website Optimizer measures your conversion ratio. Your conversion ration is the number of people doing your desired action divided by total number of website visitors. Obviously, the higher this number, the better is your website doing its job. Most non-profit websites have very dismal conversion ratios (fractions of 1 percent).

Now any blogger, webmaster, church or ministry who wants to know how the pages on their site perform in terms of conversion, can now do so with the help of Google.

For detailed instructions on how to get started check out Wild Apricot's blog post HERE

Perhaps you've seen the ads on television, but The United Methodist Church is taking its Rethink Church advertising campaign to one of the world’s most trafficked locales – New York City’s Times Square. Here is what the UMC had to say concerning their strategy.

“Times Square is an ideal fit for our Rethink Church campaign,” said the Rev. Larry Hollon, chief executive of United Methodist Communications. “You’ll find people of all ages, backgrounds, and ethnicities in Times Square, and we want to tell each of them, ‘There’s a place for you in The United Methodist Church.’”

Rethink Church, the next evolution of The United Methodist Church’s “Open hearts” welcoming and advertising campaign, highlights the many opportunities available within United Methodist churches to engage with the world.

July’s spots will focus on literacy and environmental awareness. The first spot asks, “What if church was a literacy program for homeless children? Would you come?” The second asks, “What if church considered ecology part of theology?”

What do you think? Do these kind of marketing campaigns really work? Will UMC's message resonate with the culture?

Personally I believe the message will resonate with the culture. The world needs to hear and understand the connection between our faith and acts of mercy and justice. Our faith isn't merely a private affair transforming our lives - but it is also an active faith that brings transformation to the world around us. I give the UMC a lot of credit and kudos for putting forward this message.

But let me state two important cautions and caveats. Two things must be true for this campaign message to be truly effective. First, words alone aren't enough. If we aren't truly living out what we say about our faith - then the world can rightly judge our words are merely a product of slick marketing and not much else.

Second, the campaign may bring the unchurched, curious and disenfranchised into our churches - but being cultural relevant isn't enough to make a difference in people's life unless we are churches preaching Christ crucified, risen and seated on the throne. Christ must be the center - not the campaign.

Does your church publish a e-newsletter? If they do, perhaps they send out one every month. How much of it do you think gets read?

Jeff Brooks has a good point to make at his blog - "DonorPowerBlog"

How to create a failing e-newsletter

Here's a great way to create an e-newsletter that nobody will read or respond to: Think of it as the July e-newsletter.

The moment you designate an e-newsletter by the time when it's to be sent out, you are off on the wrong foot. Instead, you should designate it by an event or action: Hurricane newsletter, opening night newsletter, food shortage newsletter.

Then, with that set, give your recipients a handful of actions related to the topic. Like find out more. Give to that fund. Buy something. Sign a petition, play a game.

That's a newsletter that will sing -- as in motivate action. - Read the rest HERE

I agree with Jeff on this point. Too often I have seen church newsletters that are just filled with endless stuff, events and ministry announcements. It is so cluttered and overwhelming that I am motivated to do nothing, except throw it in the trash after I've skimmed it.

E-newsletters (and newsletters for that matter) need to have focus. Keep it simple. Make the call to action precise and clear. Think seriously of doing away with your "monthly" newsletter.

This economy has hit everybody hard - even putting a lot of pastors (particularly asst. pastors) out on the streets. My friend Tony has a great post on the 3 steps you need to consider when going through the pastoral interview process:
Read the details of these 3 steps at Tony's blog HERE.

Just wanted to share with Ministry Best Practices readers that I was quoted in the Sunday New York Times concerning an article on Social Media and the church. In the print edition, which I bought at Starbucks today, the article was on the front page, below the fold!

Over the years, Ministry Best Practices has posted various articles on working with your church and ministry volunteers, here is a "best of" series around that topic called: How to Lead Your Volunteers Well - enjoy!